Of Fallen Angels
by alovelyburn
Summary: In which Enrico Pucci returns to Dio's mansion in Egypt two weeks after the close of Stardust Crusaders. (DioxPucci, 2,400words)


In the shadows of tall buildings  
Of fallen angels on the ceilings  
Oily feathers in bronze and concrete  
Faded colors, pieces left incomplete  
_-jump little children-_

**1.**

It takes two weeks for him to return to that place. It's the longest trip he's taken in years... and each step from the taxi to the curb is a million miles more. Even so, he winds past the gate where Pet Shop once stood guard, and down the short stone road surrounded by the once well-tended garden and-

(_Two, three._ Pucci counts his steps, keeps his mind level. Five, seven, he's standing at the door...)

-it's just the way he imagined it - broken walls and the scent of death, and a door left unmanned now that D'arby is gone. He steps around the neglected police barriers - remnants of a confused investigation begun the night Hell visited - and pushes aside the spiderwebs forming between doorways. Yes, he imagined it this way, knew its halls and its grounds well enought to picture the way it had fallen apart when he heard that fall it had.

(_Eleven. Thirteen._ His fingers run along the walls of each wide hallway, his footsteps echo in the empty rooms. _Seventeen, nineteen_...)

On the news, the state of the walls had been unclear but now, this close... yes. The empty space must have been Vanilla Ice's doing. He's sure of it. If it had been anyone else, there would be rubble, or at least dust. There would be remnants of the wall, instead of just space and dried, splattered blood - two spots near to one another, one spot against the wall. If he looks closely, he can see a thin trail of blood elsewhere, too, worn down by police footsteps and the retreating steps of servants and followers.

Three died in this room, he'd been told the day Jongalli A came to make his report. The Fool, the Magician and then... Dio's favorite.

(..._twenty-three. Twenty-nine_. He never did like Vanilla Ice very much. But the Lord preaches tolerance, or should he say Dio asked him to be polite, and so he always has been. Not that he would have been rude otherwise.)

The house smells like rot, and the plants are dying. Everything about this mansion is dying. It feels... strange. Uncomfortable.

(_Thirty-one. Thirty-seven_.)

His chest... hurts.

**2.**

_It seems long ago, but he remembers. Dio sat in his favored lounge chair and his fingers were red-tipped, as though he'd painted them with blood. His tongue was red, too, licking the edge of his lips. He seemed more natural, that day, without his glamour - hair falling in gold waves around his shoulders, his face scrubbed clean. It was morning - Pucci remembers that because he remembers the careful darkness, the absence of windows - and the lights were dim, as always, because Dio could always see. He left a lamp lit even so, to light his companion's way._

_That day, Dio sipped wine (maybe) from a glass._

"I've been keeping a journal," _he said, so casual, lips bee-stung and twisted and pink even without that gloss he liked so well. And he leaned forward, all predation, and said,_ "Do you want to know what I had to say about you?"

_Pucci gave him a look -_ that _look - and waved his hand to dismiss it. He should have said no, but he couldn't find the words. Mostly because yes, he did want to know._

_Dio said,_ "I should write something scandalous. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" _And his fingers wrapped around Pucci's wrist before it had the chance to settle back onto his lap._ "Just like in your books.," _he said with his lips against the inside of that wrist._

_Pucci closed hsi eyes. He felt the sharp teeth there scrap his skin, never breaking but always... threatening. Or teasing. And he thought about those books - stories about humanity, and about desire. Stories about the lives he'd never live, and wasn't sure he'd have wanted to live. Temptation and vice, falling from grace._

_Dio said,_ "...then again, maybe I already have. "

...

But that was then.

Pucci stands in the doorway of the library for a moment and looks at the room - perfectly organized books, well-kept, well-used.

(_Forty-one. Forty-three_.)

On the side table, there's a wine bottle half-full of red.

**3.**

Dio's bedroom smells of rust from the vase of oxidized blood at the foot of his bed. Who even knows where that came from. There are splatters on the stone floor in front of the vase, as well - dark, almost black.

Pucci tries not to think about these things too much.

He tries not to think of the skull set beside Dio's bed, too. Even so, it's oddly compelling. He's familiar enough with it, by now, to note the differences between that skull and the generic concept of skulls. He could, if forced, choose it from a set... though Dio had always changed the subject when he asked about it. Pucci was curious - even moreso for the silence, but he always thought that there would be another year, another decade - another chance to find the secrets hiding unspoken in Dio's mind.

There were stories there, he was sure, endless stories of which he'd only ever heard a fraction. Most weren't withheld, only unspoken. So many things never seem to come up in the course of everyday conversation.

(_Forty-seven. Fifty-three_. Had he ever told Dio why he'd chosen to enter the faith? Had Dio died not knowing about Pucci's ancestors, his family's traditions? Worse, had Dio died thinking those traditions were the reason he'd taken that path?)

Standing beside the bed, Pucci's fingers trace patterns on the slick silken sheets - the ruffled bedclothes. A heavy book lay on the opposite side of the place where Dio often rested, and he can imagine those hands... turning pages. Those eyes skimming the words, and...

(_Fifty-nine. Sixty-One_.)

...why had he even come here? He hadn't wanted to, not really. Ever since that night, since he heard that Dio was gone, this place had called to him and repulsed him alike - these halls where that man's footsteps still echo, where his spirit still lingers. And Pucci's fingers clutch the sheets, leave wrinkles and fingerprints behind like a stain. His eyes are dry, but his heart. Beats. Hard. And it rings in his ears like the beating of a drum, like the tolling of a great bell.

At his feet, scattered ashes and scorched leather lie ground into the stone, the remnants of a journal - Dio's journal no doubt burned by Dio's murderer - and why... had he come here? The need for closure? But this will never be closed. He knows that, now, as he sits in the abandoned ruins of everything Dio left behind.

_Why had he come?_

Sixty-Seven. Seventy-One. Seventy-three.

The pull of gravity.

**4.**

_Long after their first day has passed, he remembered the shape of Dio's hands._

_No, not quite. Not just the hands. anyone could remember that much - the width of them, the long fingers, heavy bones. No, he remembered the rest, too - they way he moved his fingers, so graceful, laced together or bent down, steepled up. The sharp, manicured nails (like claws, he thought the first time he noticed them. It was strange, but appropriate - there was always something animal about Dio, even at his most civilized), painted different colors depending on his mood. Sometimes they were clear, buffed and smoothed. Always they were perfect - clean, unstained, except those days when he dug too hard against Pucci's skin and drew up blood. Then they were smeared liquid red until he licked them clean._

_It should have been disturbing._

_Pucci thought that often, about a great many things, then. Watching Dio's obscene red - his red tongue, red blood, red lips, red nails -he thought, _If blood is life, then this man is eating life._ There it is, Pucci's life, falling drop by drop from the sharp edge of a fingernail onto Dio's tongue._

_But Pucci thought, then, of communion wafers and wine. He thought_, is it really any different than this?

_He decided no every time he wondered. Maybe he was pulled by the force of Dio, the power of him. He was the dark sun at the center of all things, and Pucci felt that, too, with every word, every breath, every look. He felt that dark light in his soul. Dio's eyes were obscene-red, too, and like anything (everything) about Dio, they could burn a man down. So he let Dio kiss him (no, it wasn't permission - it was an invitation), hard and sharp and soft and wet all at once._

_He tasted copper on his tongue and it wasn't any different than wine._

But that was then.

Now, he finds the envelope in a drawer he'd almost missed on his way out of he room. It's impossible to explain what made him look its way - why he felt the need to twist his head, just so. Why the dim light illuminated that one place - the dark edge of the not-empty space inside.

It was destiny. That's what Dio would say.

He thinks it odd, at first, how large the envelope is, given its contents: nothing but a single slip of paper - a piece of paper with a number on it, and a note, addressed to him, scrawled out in Dio's own handwriting. Fancy script, like that of a gentleman, and the awkward hints of a now-repressed antiquated style, like that of an immortal. Pucci's fingers trace over the words - _careful careful, don't smudge them_ - and he imagines Dio's pen writing them out long before he has the will to fully absorb their meaning.

...

He slips the envelope into his robe when he leaves.

**(interlude.)**

Pucci,

Before I begin, let me make this clear: should anyone other than the man to whom this is addressed read past this line, I'll know. And I'll be certain to reduce the number of living beings who've read it back by one. Stop while you have the chance.

Now, let's move on.

Pucci. Should you see this, it has likely come to you in the hands of one of my closest retainers. My immediate thought was Vanilla, but no... I expect that if I've fallen then he has, as well. Still, there are a few others - those I can trust to bring you my final words. This letter that I have written to you.

Yes, it's true. Even I, Dio, can die.

I've had many years to think on it. Actually, for quite a while, it was my most considered topic. I wonder if I've told you about it, by the now you live in. The time I spent with the sea. Perhaps not. In any case, I nearly died then. This body allowed me to survive, but even its strength is not limitless. Until the day I achieve my goals, there is always the possibility of failure. Even so, in this failure is "unacceptable." And so I leave you this:

My legacy.

It can be considered to come in two parts.

First, the journal enclosed within the envelope. In it, you will find all the things I've discovered in my long search. Without me, and without The World, it will be difficult to obtain the strength needed to see Heaven... but with the bone I gifted to you not long ago, it may not be impossible. You are a man of wisdom, even in the blush of your youth. With time, you will grow wiser still. If it's you, then I know you will find a way to do what I did not.

Next, there is my son. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. Men and women are the same to me, in the end, and his mother was present at the right place and time. The story is far too long, far too irelevant, to enter here. Leave it, instead, to this: His name is Haruno Shiobana, and he is perhaps two years old. His mother lives in Japan. Her number on that wretched phone is included here, as well. Call it, and tell her that I have gone. This is more important than you know. I will not have that boy growing up in the belief that I did not keep my promises. Not him.

I entrust these things to you because you are the only one I trust. And because it is you who chooses to trust in me with a clear-mind, and clear-eyes. I entrust them to you, as well, because I remember the night when you chose not to betray me. I remember that you are my church.

Ephesians 5:25. You see, I've been reading that book of yours for the first time in far too long.

I still believe destiny took hold the day we met. Bear my will - my spirit and flesh. Perhaps we will meet again, in the world created when Heaven comes to town.

_DIO_

**5.**

(_Seventy-nine._)

The bone is cool in Pucci's hand, and he turns it in his palm, remembering the day Dio drew it from his flesh and said, "Wherever I go, I will bring you power."

It made so little sense, at the time.

(Eighty-three.)

He reads the letter over, staring at its pale surface in the light of his living room lamp. He'll leave soon, he thinks - return to America with the bone, and his mission before him, and his future mapped out to meet it. There's nothing keeping him here now, after all. Nothing at all.

(..._once upon a time, Dio sat in the chair across from him, all that wild hair falling into his wild eyes. And his body, bare from the waist up, was pale and perfect in the artificial light. He asked for a story, then, and he closed his eyes as he listened._)

(...)

(_Eighty-nine_. )

Even now, he's angry when he thinks about the ashes in Dio's bedroom.

But Pucci grabs the phone, and he slides the letter aside to unveil a series of foreign numbers. On the other side, there would be a woman he's never met - a woman who brought Dio's blood, his flesh, his legacy, into the world.

At least one part of it. He wonders, vaguely, if there are others. If there is one child, might there not be more?

_Ninety-seven._

He dials.


End file.
